1672, but was returned in June 1675, and attached himself at once to the anti-court or country party. He frequently took part in the debates, becoming from the outset the recognised champion of the privileges of the house against all extensions of the royal prerogative. Thus in almost his first speech (23 Oct. 1675) he opposed the granting of supplies without previous redress of grievances; he subsequently asserted the illegality of an arrest not by the king's writ but by his verbal command, and when Sir Edward Seymour [q. v.], as speaker, adjourned the house against the will of its members, but in compliance with the wishes of the court, he accused him of ‘gagging his parliament.’ When in March 1678–9 the house re-elected Seymour as their speaker, and the king refused to ratify their choice, Williams repeatedly urged the house not to nominate another speaker. Outside the house he also gave proof of his party zeal, for on the breaking out of the popish plot he busied himself as recorder of Chester in procuring evidence as to the local movements of suspected catholics (see letters between October 1678 and December 1681 in Hist. MSS. Comm. 8th Rep. pp. 390–1, and Willis Bund, State Trials, ii. 1159). In 1680 he acquired further popularity with his party by his defence of Francis Smith for the publication of a libel on Chief-justice Scroggs; Jeffreys, who, like Williams, was a Welshman, led the prosecution, and their mutual dislike soon ripened into the bitterest enmity.
When, after repeated prorogations, the second parliament, elected in 1679, at last assembled on 21 Oct. 1680, Williams was unanimously elected speaker on the proposal of Lord Russell. In the intervals of the discussions on the exclusion bill the house called to account some of the leading ‘abhorrers,’ and among others who were punished with expulsion were Sir Francis Wythens, Jeffreys, and Sir Robert Peyton, whom the speaker reprimanded on their knees at the bar. This he did in such coarse terms that immediately parliament was dissolved Peyton sent him a challenge, but, instead of accepting it, the ex-speaker (who on 25 Oct. 1675 had proposed to the house that duellists be ‘reckoned incapable of pardon’) reported the affair to the privy council, whereupon Peyton was committed to the tower (RALPH). Peyton further retaliated by publishing what he described as ‘A Specimen of the Rhetoric, Candour, Gravity, and Ingenuity’ of Williams, being his speech on Peyton's expulsion, with marginal comments on its extravagances. This led Williams to publish authorised versions of several of the speeches which he subsequently delivered as speaker.
In the early days of this parliament the king appears to have made some overtures to Williams with the view of conciliating him, for, according to the latter's own statement, he was offered the chief-justiceship of Chester—an office peculiarly acceptable to a Welshman, and then held by Jeffreys, whose removal the commons were demanding—but he declined it because ‘he would not be thought to do anything that might seem to incline against the interest of the commons in that trust’ (Wynn, Argument, 88).
In the succeeding parliament which met at Oxford on 21 March 1680–1, to be abruptly dissolved only a week later, Williams was again chosen speaker, and in presenting himself to the king stated, in ‘a tone of firmness unusual on such occasions,’ that the commons intended by his re-election ‘to manifest to your majesty that they are not inclinable to changes.’ Though displeased, the king did not, as in the case of Seymour, withhold his approval, which when granted evoked another bold speech from Williams.
As Charles governed without a parliament for the remainder of his reign, Williams, relieved of the speakership, returned to his practice at the bar. Among the causes célèbres in which he was engaged were those of Count Königsmark [see Thynne, Thomas], whom he prosecuted for murder, and that of Lord Grey of Werk, whom he defended when charged with the seduction of his sister-in-law, Lady Henrietta Berkeley. But the chief sphere of his forensic activity was that of leading counsel on the whig side in cases involving questions of constitutional law, especially those fought on party lines. Among the first cases of this kind in which he appeared was that of Edmund Fitzharris, whom he defended on a charge of treason in 1681 (Luttrell, i. 78–83). He appeared on the whig side in the various trials arising out of the struggle between the whigs and the court party over the election of the city sheriffs in 1682, defending Pilkington and Shute and their partisans for riot, and Sir Patience Ward [q. v.] for perjury in 1683, and Thomas Papillon [q. v.] for false arrest in 1684. He was one of the counsel assigned to Algernon Sidney [q. v.], and appears to have taken much pains in instructing him for his trial. Several papers drawn up by Williams for this purpose are still preserved (Williams Wynn MSS.), and extracts from them were printed in Howell's edition of ‘State Trials’ (ix. 826). He also gave verbal instructions to Sidney in the earlier stages of the trial, for which Jeffreys ‘reproved’
